


under all these stars

by tinuviel_tinuviel



Category: The Ascendance Trilogy - Jennifer A. Nielsen
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Stargazing, heart to heart on the castle roof, imogen's POV, set between the false prince and the runaway king, uhhh lowkey imogen pining but what else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25346479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinuviel_tinuviel/pseuds/tinuviel_tinuviel
Summary: It was Imogen that thought to look for Jaron on the roof. The king had disappeared after dinner, and a search of the library, the stables, the gardens and his chambers— his usual haunts— turned up nothing. His horse was still here, as was his sword; he hadn’t run away. Kerwyn fretted, Mott rolled his eyes, and Imogen slipped out the servant’s door in the kitchen while the rest of the search party was looking away.If you climbed the oak by the greenhouse, you could scramble onto its slick glass roof and then swing up onto the roof of the queen’s solar, inaccessible by other means. Imogen did just that, beads popping from the embroidered bodice that still felt like someone else’s as she hauled herself up beside the boy that already sat there.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30





	under all these stars

It was Imogen that thought to look for Jaron on the roof. The king had disappeared after dinner, and a search of the library, the stables, the gardens and his chambers— his usual haunts— turned up nothing. His horse was still here, as was his sword; he hadn’t run away. Kerwyn fretted, Mott rolled his eyes, and Imogen slipped out the servant’s door in the kitchen while the rest of the search party was looking away.

If you climbed the oak by the greenhouse, you could scramble onto its slick glass roof and then swing up onto the roof of the queen’s solar, inaccessible by other means. Imogen did just that, beads popping from the embroidered bodice that still felt like someone else’s as she hauled herself up beside the boy that already sat there.

“Sage,” she said, by way of greeting, and then corrected herself. “King Jaron.”

He hunched his shoulders. “Sage,” he confirmed.

“I thought you might be up here.”

“Is everyone looking for me?”

She nodded. He exhaled, squeezing his eyes shut, and she felt a twinge of pity. His mask of certainty seemed to have fooled his new court, but she had always been good at reading people— even him. He was overwhelmed. Screwing up her courage, she reached out and squeezed his arm. “I didn’t tell them where you were, though.”

At that, he lifted his head. “Oh, saints bless you. I needed time alone.”

“I can go—”

“Wait,” he said, catching her hem. “Please don’t leave.”

“Kings don’t grab the skirts of noblewomen,” she chided, pulling herself free, and then dropping down beside him once more. “But if you are Sage tonight, then I am only Imogen, and I’ll forgive you.”

At the gentle teasing in her tone, he finally smiled. “I’m glad you’re the one that found me. I hadn’t quite thought of an excuse that would satisfy Mott.”

Hiding a swell of warmth at the maybe-compliment, she said, “I would think Lord Kerwyn was a bigger concern. Weren’t you supposed to meet with him to discuss… something?”

“My behavior at council meetings,” Sage supplied. “But Kerwyn’s a push-over. If I manage to keep my mouth shut while he lectures me, he’ll inevitably get teary and make some comment about how much I look like Darius.” A breeze blew through the garden, tossing the dark trees beneath their feet like waves, ruffling her skirts. Imogen wasn’t sure how to respond to Sage; hopefully he didn’t expect her to. She didn’t believe that his nonchalance was genuine. After a moment, her silence paid off. “I don’t, though. Look like Darius, I mean. At least, I never did when we were both— when we both lived here. He looked—” he gestured helplessly, grasping for the right words. “Like Father, I guess. Even when we were kids, you could believe that he would be a king someday.” He let his hand fall.

“I look like my mother,” Imogen said. It maybe wasn’t the right thing to say, not what he was asking, nothing to do with the unspoken riddle of his kingship. But he was honest with her, and not in the careless way of a noble who forgot that the mute servant girl still had ears and a mind of her own. She wanted to return the favor.

“I heard that that’s why you went to Farthenwood,” he said, tilting his head to look at her. “Conner was angry when your mother married someone else since he loved her.”

“He wanted her,” Imogen corrected. “If he loved her, he would have forgiven our family’s debt instead of raising it.”

“Oh. Do you miss her?”

“Sometimes. When I lived in Farthenwood, I only saw her once or twice a year.” Her mother’s image was grainy in her memory— she was a tired woman, with dark hair and narrow shoulders.

He frowned. “Conner has a lot to answer for.”

“It wasn’t just him,” she admitted. “Even on days off— I would go down to the river, or walk to Tithio. I didn’t want to go home.”

“Why?”

She frowned out at the night sky. “My mother felt so guilty that I had to go to work after my father died. She treated me like a martyr. And if I’d chosen my life, I wouldn’t have chosen to go to Farthenwood, but I grew used to it. The work wasn’t pleasant, I suppose, and I didn’t like how the other servants treated me, but they weren’t mocking the real Imogen, only the piece of me I let them see— mute, slow and timid.” When she glanced at him, she was surprised by how closely he was listening. With a quick shrug, she said, “You probably know how that feels.”

“Hiding yourself? Or leaving your family?”

“Both.”

He nodded, looking thoughtful. Imogen hoped she hadn’t said too much. It was easy to talk to him. “You could go home, if you wanted to,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

He snorted. “What kind of answer is that?”

“The polite kind?”

“That was  _ not _ an Imogen talking to Sage response.”

“Well, giving me  _ permission _ to go home isn’t something Sage has the authority to do,” she pointed out, arching an eyebrow that he wouldn’t be able to see in the soft moonlight.

“I wasn’t giving permission, I was just— you can live wherever you want. Do whatever you want. I don’t want you to feel obligated to stay here if you’re unhappy.”

He said it so earnestly she had to believe him, and she loved him for it. It was his earnestness that made Drylliad feel as much like home as anywhere else she’d lived. The words  _ thank you _ were on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back. Instead, after a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I’m happy here. At least right now.”

“Right right now?” he asked.

“Right right now,” she said, smiling. “Under all these stars.”

In the moonlight, his teeth glinted as he returned the smile. “I am too. You’re very easy to talk to, have people told you that?”

“They have not, and I’m certain it’s not true,” she said.

“Well, maybe we’re the same kind of hard to talk to,” he decided. “I’ve certainly never had this much success talking to Princess Amarinda.” He said her name like it was made of glass, liable to break and fill his skin with splinters. 

“She’s very kind,” Imogen said, a little doubtfully. She was still sorting out her own opinions regarding the princess.

“I know,” he said. “But— ugh. She doesn’t understand why I forget the names of nobles or slip into an Avenian accent or accidentally take too much food. I still have too much Sage inside me, hungry and mistrustful, and even if I’m remembering how to be Jaron bit by bit every day, it’s too slow.”

“You’ll figure it out,” she said. The thought made her unexpectedly sad. One day he would be all Jaron and then they would lose this unspoken bond.

“I hope so,” he said, and pursed his lips. “I wonder if she thinks I look like Darius.”

“If you’re so curious, I can tell you who you look like,” she said. “I’ve seen the royal portraits.”

“Oh?”

“Look at me,” she said, and he turned his head, moonlight falling across his face. She made a show of studying the shape of his nose, the arch of his eyebrows, the shadows pooling beneath his jaw, and then, without meaning to, met his eyes. Her mouth went dry. “You look like a king,” she said softly. “But not like him. You just look like you.”

His gaze dropped. Then they heard movement in the garden below. In a flash, he drew his legs up over the edge of the roof and scrambled up the shallow slope of the roof, over the peak, and then waved her over frantically. Imogen followed, hoisting her skirts with one hand and taking his offered hand with the other. He pulled her over the peak and pressed a finger to his lips, grinning. Her heart was thudding. The walker in the garden spoke too quietly to make out his words, but she recognized the voice. “Mott,” she whispered.

“And Tobias, I think,” Sage said. “Should I turn myself in?”

“And get me in trouble, too?” she whispered.

“You’re right,” he said. “We’ll have to wait them out.” They had to splay flat against the roof to be certain they were out of sight, and after a while of laying uncomfortably on the beading on her bodice front, Imogen rolled over carefully, looking up at the stars. He did too, and they lay staring up into darkness as deep as an ocean as Mott and Tobias’ irritated voices passed below them, and then faded into the quiet of the night. The longer she lay there, the harder it was to keep from turning her head to look at Sage, to see the stars gleaming in his eyes. A strange wistfulness had taken hold of her. Whether she found them in the sky or in his eyes, the stars would be out of her reach, but that didn’t stop her from longing for them.

Luckily, she knew how to keep her longing quiet. Blinking to pull her gaze from the distant constellations, she raised herself onto one elbow, pretending she didn’t see Sage look hurriedly away from her as she whispered, “We should go back down.”

“Do you think I could make it up to my room before being seen and convince Mott I’ve been asleep the whole time?”

“He checked your room already.” With an easy exchange of knees and shoulders as hand- and foot-holds, they slid down to the edge of the solar’s roof and scrambled onto the ridge of the greenhouse.

“I have a lot of blankets on my bed. He might’ve missed me.”

A smile twitched on her lips as she swung into the branches of the oak. “It’s certainly worth a try.” Unencumbered by a noblewoman’s skirts or a sense of self-preservation, he reached the ground before her and offered his hand to help her down from the lowest limb. She took it, pleased by the last press of his fingers, and lowered herself back to the solid earth.

“Thank you,” she said, shaking the leaves from her less-than-clean skirts, making a note to scrub out any muddy streaks before turning it over to the laundresses. “King Jaron,” she added.

“The pleasure was all mine, my lady,” he said, and the title didn’t sound nearly so strange in his teasing tone. And even when she had lied to Mott and scrubbed her skirts and crawled into bed, she could still see his smile, and the stars in his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> hmmm i love them  
> drop kudos & a comment or come talk to me at @piratekingimogen on tumblr! :D


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